Acta Scientiarum. Human and Social Sciences ISSN: 1679-7361 [email protected] Universidade Estadual de Maringá Brasil
Schmitz, John Robert When lies become the truth: rewriting the conquest of Mexico in Carlos Fuentes's novella, The Two Shores Acta Scientiarum. Human and Social Sciences, vol. 28, núm. 1, 2006, pp. 1-6 Universidade Estadual de Maringá Maringá, Brasil
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How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative When lies become the truth: rewriting the conquest of Mexico in Carlos Fuentes’s novella, The Two Shores
John Robert Schmitz
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), 13083 -970, Cidade Universitária, Barão Geraldo, Campinas, São Paulo, Brasil. e-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT. This paper owes its inspiration to Jay’s (1997) article on Carlos Fuentes’s The Two Shores (Las dos Orillas, in the original, and As Duas Margens in the Portuguese version), one of the long short stories in the celebrated M exican author’s collected stories El Naranjo, translated as The Orange Tree and A Laranjeira, in the respective English and Portuguese versions. Jay bases his analysis on a number of authors in Translation Studies 1. Translation and mistranslation is just o ne aspect of this very rich and complex narrative. I argue that Jay’s use of the word “translation” to refer to Fuentes’s novella is too broad to be useful if one takes into account the existence of different types of translation and varied strategies employed by translators to deal with literary, technical, commercial, legal and Biblical texts in their daily work (Sager, 1998). Key words: rewriting, translation, Carlos Fuentes, globalization, post -modernism, conquest of México.
RESUMO. Quando as mentiras se tornam a verdade: a re-escrita da conquista do México no conto As Duas Margens de Carlos Fuentes. Este trabalho deve a sua inspiração ao artigo de autoria de Jay (1997) sobre o conto The Two Shores (“Las dos Orillas”, na língua fonte, e “As Duas Margens” na versão em língua portuguesa), um dos contos incluídos na coletânea El naranjo escrito por Carlos Fuentes, célebre autor mexicano. Jay baseia a sua análise nos trabalhos de especialistas no campo de Estudos da Tradução (ver nota de rodapé 1). A (in)fidelidade é somente um aspecto desta narrativa complexa. Argumento que o uso por parte de Jay do vocábulo “tradução ” é abrangente demais para ser útil, levando em consideração a existência de diferentes tipos de tradução e de uma gama de estratégias utilizadas por parte de tradutores no trabalho diário para traduzir textos literários, técnicos, comerciais, jurídicos e bíblicos (Sager, 1998). Palavras-chave: reescrita, tradução, Carlos Fuentes, globalização, pós-modernismo, conquista do México.
Introduction events that brought about the fall of the Aztec Empire and the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish The Two Shores forces led by Hernán Cortés. This short story Carlos Fuentes’s novel The Two Shores, part1 of a recounts the role of one Jerônimo Aguilar who collection of short stories included in the volume mistranslates Cortes’s words, thereby lying to the The Orange Tree (El naranjo)2, deals with the tragic defeated Guatemuz, but in reality, telling him the truth. His “mistranslation” communicates what will indeed come about: “You will be my prisoner, today. 1All references cited by the authors I present in the final bibliography are provided in footnotes in this paper to help interested readers locate the sources. I have not I will torture you by burning your feet and those of read all the sources cited by them. Cf. P. de Man, Conclusion: Walter Benjamin’s The Task of the Translator. pgs. 73-105. The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: your comrades until you confess where the rest of University of Minneapolis Press, 1986; B. Johnson. Taking Fidelity your uncle Montezuma’s treasure is…” (Fuentes, Philosophically, In: Gramham, J. E. ed. Difference in Translation. Ithaca: Cornell 3 University Press, 1985; J. Derrida. Des Tours de Babel, In Graham, op.cit.; S. 1995, p. 10) . Basnett and Lefevere, A. Introduction. p. 1-13. Translation, History and Culture. Ed. Basnett, S. and Lefevere A. London: Pinter Publishers, 1990; E. Gentzler, Aguilar came to the New World with hi s Spanish Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routledge, 1993. compatriots, was shipwrecked, lost in the wild, and 2The collection of short stories in which The Two Shores is included bears the name The Orange Tree (El Naranjo or A Laranjeira). The orange has its origin in Persia and traveled around the world and was introduced to the New World as a result of the Spanish Conquest. It represents the globe and might be considered Literária. (Federal University of Pernambuco), v. 17, no. 2, p. 223-242, (julho), a symbol of globalization. Aguilar (Fuentes, 1995, p.14) points to tomatoes, 2004 and M.F.Guillén. Is globalization civilizing, destructive or feeble: A critique of turkeys, corn, potatoes and chocolate as items never seen in Europe. The horse, five key debates in the social science literature. Ann. Rev. of Sociol. 27, p. 235- extinct in America, returned with the conquest. I have argued elsewhere that the 260, 2001. Spanish Conquest of the Americas is one of the early instances of globalization. 3I have chosen to use the English translation of Fuentes’s collection of stories: Cf. J.R. SCHMITZ. O inglês como língua internacional, globalização e o futuro de Carlos Fuentes, The Orange Tree (Translated by Alfred Macadam) New York: outras línguas e culturas: uma reflxão. Investigações: Lingüística e Teoria Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995. Acta Sci. Human Soc. Sci. Maringá, v. 28, n. 1, p. 1-6, 2006 2 Schmitz then found and adopted by the Indians. He learned All this I saw. The fall of the great Aztec city in the their language, took on their customs and referred to moan of conch shells, the clash of steel against flint them as his brothers. We have, in this instance, an and the fire of the Castilian cannon. I saw the burnt excellent example of the “double bind” on the part water of the lake where stood the Great Tenochtitlán, two times the size Córdoba (Fuentes, of Aguilar, an identity with the Aztecs, on one hand, 1995, p. 3). and an allegiance, on the other, with his fellow Spaniards and his commander Cortés, that is, and Aguilar’s reference to the “clash of steel against identity with the “two shores”, with two worlds, the flint” and the “fire of the Castilian cannon” are European and the American. He agonizes about his indeed telling for the Aztecs were doomed to be special situation: “But I found myself divided conquered by a relatively small number of Spanish between Spain and the New World. I knew both troops “fewer than six hundred” who were militarily shores.” (Fuentes, 1995, p. 22). Aguilar marks his superior with swords, horses and fire power dual identity very explicitly in the use of pronouns “subdued an empire nine times larger than Spain in for he attributes his death to “… a bouquet of territory and three times larger in population” plagues bestowed on me by my own Indian brothers (Fuentes, 1995, p. 6-7). in exchange for the evils we Spaniards visited on them.” (Fuentes, 1995, p. 3-4). The protagonist The conquest of new Spain: Bernal Diaz del Castillo stresses this again when he remarks: “ We Spaniards Fuentes’s long short story The Two Shores retells killed something more than the power of the the conquest of the Aztec Empire as well as the part Indians” (Fuentes, 1995, p. 9). Aguilar makes his Aguilar played in that event. It is based on The new identity clear: Conquest of New Spain by another eyewitness to the I fell in love with my new people, with their simple event, the Spanish historian, Bernal Diaz del Castillo way of dealing with the matters of life, letting the (London: Penguin, 1963) who cites Aguilar in many daily necessities take care of themselves naturally but instances in his account. Aguilar did indeed act as a without diminishing the importance of s erious translator for Cortés, but there is no suggestion in things (Fuentes, 1995, p. 40). The Conquest that he (Aguilar) mistranslated Cortés’s The structure of this lengthy short story is words. As narrator, Aguilar provides his own view of ingenious. Fuentes has his main protagonist and the what happened and what did not happen. Aguilar narrator Jerônimo de Aguilar relate his story from interprets his experience in this meeting of two the grave: “I just died of buboes 4. A horrible death, worlds and approximation of Europea n and Indian. painful, incurable” (Fuentes, 1995, p. 3). Aguilar is a What is new here is Aguilar’s reflective and deceased narrator but indeed a very self -aware one evaluative stance with respect to the conquest of for he agonizes, in this posthumous narration, over Mexico. his betrayal of Cortés via his unfaithful translation as Let’s not fool ourselves. No one escaped unscathed well as inability to prevent the decimation of the from this venture of conquest and discovery --- Indians by the Spanish conquistadores. In death, he neither the conquered who witnessed the actually threats about his inability to stop the course destruction of their world, nor the conquerors, who of history. In this story, we listen to the voice of a never achieved the total satisfaction of their dead man who while indeed not at all “conscious” ambitions, suffering endless injustices and actually suffers the pangs of “conscience”, his f eeling disenchantments (Fuentes, 1995, p. 4-5). of guilt about his “translational” disloyalty and his As Cortés’s translator, Aguilar bluntly states that impotence in the face of the fatal events. he: “… translated, betrayed and invented” (Fuentes, The story is divided into eleven parts beginning 1995, p. 10). But his disloyalty to his commander with number (10) and regressing to zero, no doubt and his attempt to tell the truth with “his lies” to to nothingness. Section ten begins with the fall of the Aztecs is only one aspect of the story. Aguilar’s the Aztec Empire observed by Aguilar, an eye narrative is more daring for his account stands as witness to the events. Aguilar describes poignantly actually a rewriting or a palimpsest of del Castillo’s the fall of Tenochtitlán in these words: well known history (de Toro, Internet, accessed on 29 sept. 2006). Is Castillo’s The Conquest of New Spain really history or just as much fiction as 4The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language . New York: Aguilar’s The Two Shores? Could del Castillo have Lexicon Publications, Inc. 1988, p. 125 provides an entry for the word “bubo” which is defined accordingly: “ bubo ( bjú:bou) pl. buboes n. (med.) an inflamed lied as well and purposely “constructed” the events swelling of a lymph gland, esp. In the groin or armpit bubonic (bjubónik) adj. [L. L. fr. Gk boubon, groin]. This dictionary also registers bubonic plague: “an to please those in power? The line between history epidemic disease symptomatized by fever, chills, protration, and bubões. It is spread by rats and transmitted to man by fleas” (p. 125) . and fiction is often tenuous. The Spaniards came to Acta Sci. Human Soc. Sci. Maringá, v. 28, n. 1, p. 1-6, 2006 When lies become the truth 3 the “other shore” or “other margin” in the name of informs: “We (my emphasis) revoked the edicts of their King and Queen and their Christian God. expulsion for Jews and Moors” (Fuentes, 1995, p. 44). Their historian, Diaz Del Castillo never questions All of us (my emphasis) who contribute d to the the Conquest but Aguilar does. In the Conquest, Indian conquest of Spain immediately felt that a Aguilar is cited frequently but he is merely one of universe simultaneously new and recovered, the hundreds of individuals who participated in the permeable, complex and fertile, frustrating the fatal discovery and destruction of Aztec civilization. In purifying plan of the Catholic kings, Ferdinand and Fuentes’s The Two Shores, Aguilar is the protagonist Isabella (Fuentes, 1995, p. 45). (my emphasis, Kay, 1997, p. 407). Aguilar’s conception of a “new” Old World with its The temples fell, the standards, the trophies. The racial mixing, intercultural context and multiple very gods themselves fell. And the day after the identities reflects what is happening in Europe, defeat, using the stones of the Indian temples, we America and parts of Asia and Africa today. The began to build the Christian churches (Fuentes, concept of a pure nation-state with one language, a 1995, p. 3). unified culture, and one identity is indeed a thing of The last section (0) of the story ends with the past. Aguilar’s narrative, with the help of his Aguilar’s narration of what did not happen in Spanish “brothers” and fellow Indians who contributed history. He imagines a rewriting of history for he to the invasion of Europe and a rewriting of history, relates how Spain is vanquished by the Mexican serves as a distant mirror to perceive what is occurring forces. today before our own eyes. In Aguilar’s “sleep of death”, the Jews, the All this I saw. The fall of the great Andalusian city in the moan of the conch shells, the clash of steel children of Israel, as he calls them, return to Spain, against flint, and the fire of Mayan flamethrowers. I to the “… cruel mother who expelled them.” say the burnt water of the Guadalquivir and the (Fuentes, 1995, p. 44) The Moors also return and burning tower of Gold (Fuentes, 1995, p. 43) . the air is filled “… with songs sometime s deep, like a sexual moan, sometimes high” along with “sweet History is rewritten by a dead man w ho provides Mayan music” (Fuentes, 1995, p. 44). an alternate account of the events. In his scenario, Aguilar asks two intriguing questions about the the Mayans have flamethrowers and conquer the workings of the world: “What would have Spanish city of Sevilla. From his grave, Aguilar states happened if what did happen didn’t?” and “What that the “New World” is older than the European would have happened if what did not happen did?” and that the stones of the Aztec pyramids are “as old (Fuentes, 1995, p. 47). Why do things happen in real as those in Egypt”. The deceased man’s life the way they do and not in another way? Fuentes reconstruction of history presents a new world order is concerned with fate and destiny. Was it really the in which the religious words of Christ, Mohammed, case that the moment the Spanish forces embarked Abraham and Quetzalcoatl exist harmoniously and for the “New World”, the Indians were condemned “… where all powers of imagination and language to their tragic destiny? Could it all have occurred would have their place without exception” (Fuentes, differently? These questions as the above have also 1995, p. 44). To be sure, in these early years of the intrigued social scientists, philosophers and st 21 Century we are concerned about the many historians from the beginning of what we call religious fundamentalisms that “fatally” lead to civilization. Sidney Hook (1962, p. 103) in his O violence at this very moment. This is one of the Herói na História refers to the “if” in history. He asks messages in Fuentes’s story. The late Aguilar is what would have happened if Napoleon has fled to indeed presenting a Mexican view of the Spanish America or, as Winston Churchill once asked, what conquest. Cortés’s cruelty to the Indians is duly would have been the consequences if the noted. There are no statues to Hernán Cortés in Confederate General Robert E. Lee had wo n a battle Mexico. He is a hated figure and far from being a during the American War of Succession? 5 hero. The Spanish sovereigns’ (Ferdinand and Isabela) plan was to remove both Jew and Arab from Paul Jay’s analysis of The Two Shores Spain and to use the so-called “Holy” Inquisition to Paul Jay (1997) bases his analysis of the Mexican identify, torture and kill those whose blood was short story on the work of scholars in the field of deemed to be “impure”. The Indian “conquest” of Europe creates a “new world” in the Old World. 5The focus of this paper does not deal with what might have or could have Aguilar uses the pronoun “we” to include himself as happened in history. Suffice it to say that HOOK (1962, p. 110) distinguishes part of this invasion by his brother Indians. He between wild speculation or fantasy, on one hand and scientific reconstruction, on the other. Acta Sci. Human Soc. Sci. Maringá, v. 28, n. 1, p. 1-6, 2006 4 Schmitz translation studies (Basnett and Lefevere, 1990, translation studies contend. Jay (1997, p. 411) Gentzler (1993). Jay (1997, p. 413) argues that subscribes, on one hand, to de Man’s (1986) claim Fuentes’s short story “… can be read as a translation that the original text is “obliterated” by the new of Bernal Diaz’s The Conquest of New Spain, one that rendition and, on the other, to Gentzler’s (1993) seeks, quite literally, to undo or reverse his chronicle view that it also modified, thereby deferring and of the conquest.” Jay (1997, p. 421) follows Basnett displacing forever any possibility of grasping that and Lefevere (1990) who view translation as a which the original text desired to name”. Historians “rewriting of an original text”. Jay goes on to can still read del Castillo´s True History and may not conclude that Fuentes’s narrative represents “a view Fuentes´ novella as an historical document. In postmodern translation of Diaz” or a postmodern my view, Fuentes’s narrative in no way obliterates mediation on translation”. The word “postmodern” Diaz del Castillo’s True History for it still exists and for Hassan (1985, p. 119-120) is not a stable term as can be read independently. Different readers who some writers would have us believe. Hassan (1985, consult the 16th Century history at this time can p. 121) argues that “… no clear consensus about its both attribute and grasp varied meanings depending meaning among scholars […]. Thus some critics on their backgrounds and purpose in reading. The mean by postmodernism what others call avant - existence of Fuentes’s short story does not silence gardism or even neo-avent-gardism, while still the True History. others would call the same phenomenon simply Another problem is that Fuentes’s short story is modernism”. not what the majority of members of the reading While I agree with Jay that Fuentes’s novel is a public would consider a translation to be. In fact, it reversal of the Conquest in that the events are is a rewriting, but the word “rewriting” is presented from the end to the beginning rather than ambiguous. It can refer to something being written the beginning to the end, I fin d it difficult to accept up a second, third or more times, that is, a revision that The Two Shores is a “translation” of the 16 th with corrections and alterations. Or, it can be Century history. Is Fuentes’s short story a another writing that mirrors, “enhances” or distorts translation in the same sense that Véridique Histoire de (my emphasis) the original in varying degrees. It all la Conquete de la Nouvelle Espagne (Translated by depends on what the readership or interpretive Alphonse Lemeure, 1878) or The True History of the community considers as an enhancement or a Conquest of Mexico (Translated by Maurice Keatinge distortion. In my view, The Two Shores is indeed an New York: McBride and Co., first published in original, innovative and very creative story on its 1800!) are translations? Jay ascribes a wide meaning own ground, a radical departure from The True 6 to the word “translation”. Sager (1998, p. 69) argues History of the Conquest of New Spain , situated not in th that there are indeed different types of translation the 16 Century but plainly in the last decade of the th and he points to technical, literary, and Bible 20 Century. I agree with Jay (1997, p. 411) that translations. He argues that they are all distinct “… Fuentes’s narrative is a parody of the True History but on the basis of the different choices made by the Mexican author is no means a “translator” of the th translators on a small number of parameters which 16 historical work. determine distinct strategies for each major translation type” (My emphasis). When one thinks of a Aguilar, a male chauvinist? Is he a trustworthy “translation” one can point to a travel brochure narrator? translated from French to English, an affidavit In this rewriting of history, Aguilar informs his written in English and rendered into Portuguese, or readers that “… Europe has marked the face of this an instruction manual “verted” from Englis h to New World, which, in fact, is older than the Japanese. European face” (Fuentes, 1995, p. 4). He also claims Certainly in the case of the Mexican short story that “… the stones we’ve found here are as old as as well as the two translations cited, there actually is those of Egypt” (Fuentes, 1995, p. 4). These are a “transporting”, a “carrying over”, but the treatment provoking and controversial claims. of the source text in the French and English versions is quite different from Fuentes’s supposed 6 Some scholars are rightly outraged at the violence and injustice of colonialism translation of the events. It is not a question of and imperialism in times past. Some tend to forget that Histories such as Bernal Diaz Del Castillo’s True History were also situated in a particular moment in time. faithfulness to the text or to the readership here. All Manuel Durán, a celebrated hispanist considers the True History as both a literary and historical work. He argues that Bernal Diaz’s account “… represents target texts betray their source texts in a multitude of an act of rebellion and almost a deicide, in the sense that he removes in his ways. It would seem that (almost) anything can be a narrative Cortés’s mythical or god -like qualities. The Indians attributed divine qualities to the Spaniards and, of course, as a Christian writer Bernal Diaz Del “translation” if we accept what some specialists in Castillo´S intention was to make it clear in his narrative that Cortés was human with no supposed supernatural powers (Duran, 1992, p. 80 3). Acta Sci. Human Soc. Sci. Maringá, v. 28, n. 1, p. 1-6, 2006 When lies become the truth 5
One point that has not, to my knowledge, been everything, this bitch of a Marina, this whore who examined is Aguilar’s relationship to Malintzín, the learned to speak Spanish. This scoundrel, this enslaved Indian woman baptized with the name trickster, this expert in sucking, the conquistador’s Marina. He states the she “caught his eye, not only concubine, had stolen my professional singularity away from me, the function where there was no because of her beauty but because of her arrogance ”. substitute for me, my--- to coin a word--- my The smitten Aguilar continues: monopoly (Aguilar’s emphasis) over the Castilian We exchanged looks, and without speaking I said to language. La Malinche has pulled the Spanish her, “Be mine. I speak your Maya tongue and love language out of Cortés’s sex, she’d sucked it out of your people, I don’t know how to combat the fatality him, she castrated him of it without his knowin g it, of all that’s happening. I can’t stop it, but perhaps by disguising mutilations as pleasure… (Fuentes, you and I together, Indian and Spanish, can save 1995, p. 24-25). something if we come to an agreement and above all As a critical reader of this short story, I indeed if we love each other a bit…” (Fuentes, 1995, p. 31). have a problem with this narrative. Both the author While Aguilar’s plan to save the Aztec’s from (Fuentes) and the narrator (Aguilar) are men. How their fate may appear to be generous and noble, it would the story be told if, fir st of all, the author can also be argued that he was motivated by were a woman and, secondly, if the main protagonist ambition, lust and personal gain. He dreamed that were Marina? These questions are not raised by Jay both he and Marina “… owners of the languages (1997) who is merely impressed with “postmodern would be also owners of the lands, an invincible rewriting” of Bernal Diaz’s True History. Marina is a couple because we understood the two voices of victim of her own male-dominated society, was sold Mexico, the voice of men and the voice of the gods” as a slave, and subsequently she, along with a (Fuentes, 1995, p. 32). In an erotic, but frustrating number of other Indian women, were “presented” scene for Aguilar, he tells his readers that Marina to Cortés as a tribute. No doubt she was converted undressed before him, “… while a simultaneous (or coerced?) into becoming a Christian. Marina chorus of hummingbirds, dragonflies, rattlesnakes, became the or one of the mistresses of Cortés (my lizards, and hairless dogs broke lose around her emphasis). The stakes for her were high. She was transfigured nakedness.” Aguilar coldly co ncludes abandoned by her own relatives, disinherited, and that “… she disrobed to deny herself to me” sold into slavery. The presence of the Spanish forces (Fuentes, 1995, p. 32), for the following day, Aguilar in the New World offered an opportunity of survival laments, “Cortés choose her as his concubine and for those individuals who were bilingual or even his interpreter”. Could this erotic picture be a dream multilingual. Her knowledge of the native Aguilar had when he was alive? languages, their cultures as well as political problems Women have always been ill-treated no doubt and, no doubt, her competence opened new life even before the beginnings of civilization and still chances for her. For Kummer, Marina´s position in today, women, in many parts of the world suffer at the new world order in which she was enmeshed is the hands of men. Marina would be no exception. highly complex: As an historical figure in Mexico, Marina survived She (=Marina) can take over this function because enslavement, violence, humiliation and a liaison through her transformation of allegiance to the other with Cortés (she had no choice!) and gave birth to side, she, as representative for her tribe, has one his many children. For some, she is a heroine established a bridge to the dominant society, in as for she gave birth to the first child, born of a mother much as she submits to their dominance a nd yet, at from one shore and of a father from the other, a the same time, identifies with it and accepts the product of racial mixing. For others, Marina is called norms imposed by the conqueror and passes them “La Malinche” meaning “traitor” for as a translator, on to her tribe (Kummer, 1981, p. 179) . informant and spy she contributed to the demise of Kummer simply outlines the role of native the Aztec Empire and the establishment of a Spanish speakers who for one reason or another change presence in Mexico. identities and act as “cultural brokers” between the Aguilar confesses his jealousy of Cortés, his dominant group and the dominated. I agree with the rancor at Marina and his resentment at loosing his feminist historians, in particular, Alarcon, (1981, status as the sole translator and proprietor of the 1989)7 cited in Delisle and Woodsworth (1995, languages. Notice the bitterness in his sexist, chauvinist references to Marina: 7 Cf. N. Alarcón. Chicana’s Feminist Literature: A Revision through Malintzin/or Malintzin: Putting Flesh Back on the Object”. In: Moraga, C. and Anzaldúa G. I realized that Jerónimo de Aguilar was no longer (Ed.), The Bridge Called me Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Academic Press, 1981 and also N. Alarcón. /Traddutora, Traditora: A needed. The diabolical figure was translating Paradigmatic Figure of Chicana Feminism”, Cultural Critique. 1989. Acta Sci. Human Soc. Sci. Maringá, v. 28, n. 1, p. 1-6, 2006 6 Schmitz p. 149) who “stress the constraints to which she was (or a post-colonial view as de Toro (2006, p. 5) subjected as a woman and a slave, and who look contends) when it comes to the role of women in upon her as a model, a symbol of fruitful cross - society. In the course of my paper, I have asked how cultural exchange rather than betrayal. Fuentes’s a woman writer would react to Bernal Diaz del short story, I would argue, is far from being (with Castillo’s 16th Century history and Fuentes’s respect to the treatment of women) postcolonial, for contemporary short story. gender differences and inequality in the distribution Finally, one last remark. Jay (1997 , p. 407) states of power have not been dealt with, as Simon (1996, that Fuentes …” develops in the The Two Shores a p. 167) “… to loosen the bonds of accepted verities, rich, complicated and speculative exploration of to challenge social and conceptual hierarchies ”. translation in all its guises. One can only speculate if Fuentes actually was familiar and consulted the Some final words about The Two Shores bibliography dealing with translation and Translation Studies cited by Jay in the course of his I have argued that Fuentes’s s hort story is article (see footnote 1 above). If this is the case, it is imaginative and creative. It is “original” in the sense felicitous indeed. If not, it is all the more admirable. that Fuentes uses the material in the 16 th Century history of Diaz del Castillo to weave his own story References with a “conscious” but deceased narrator who indeed suffers from the pangs of “cons cience” due to DESLISLE, J.; WOODSWORTH, J. Translators through his disloyalty, on one hand, to his commander and history. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing fellow compatriot and, on the other, to his distress at Company/Unesco Publishing, 1995. the cruelty bestowed on his Indian “brothers” by the DE TORO, A. Figuras de La Hibridez: Carlos Fuentes, Spanish expedition and his inability to impede the Gillermo Gómes Peña, Gloria An daldúa y Alberto tragic and fatal course of even ts.8 This interesting Kurapel. Available on:
8For an interesting study of fatality in translation and “translation as destiny”, cf. K. Rajagopalan. A Fatalidade da Tradução. Estudos Acadêmicos Unibero (União Ibero-Americano), Faculdade Ibero -Americana (São Paulo), Ano III, n. 5, p. 41- 48, março, 1997. Acta Sci. Human Soc. Sci. Maringá, v. 28, n. 1, p. 1-6, 2006 Acta Sci. Human Soc. Sci. Maringá, v. 28, n. 1, p. 1-6, 2006